To our Stakeholders:

STATEMENT OF CONTINUED SUPPORT FOR THE UN GLOBAL COMAPCT

I am pleased to confirm that Bens Electronics Services Ltd, a technical services provider company registered in Kenya, reaffirms its support of the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact in the areas of Human Rights, Labour, Environment and Anti-Corruption.

In this annual Communication on Progress, we describe our actions to continually improve the integration of the Global Compact and its principles into our business strategy, culture and daily operations. We also commit to sharing this information with our stakeholders using our primary channels of communication.

During our past one year since joining the membership of the UN Global Compact, of particular note has been our adoption of the disclaimer on corruption which is now included as a footnote in all our emails to any entities we communicate with.

Yours Sincerely
For Bens Electronics Services Ltd

Benedict O. Makokha
CEO and Founder
Tel 0700191157

Bens Electronics is a signatory to several Kenyan and UN International Organizations that subscribe to Zero Tolerance to Corruption, Work Place negative practices such as nepotism, ethnicity and gender imbalance. By interacting with us, you should be assured that all our intentions are noble and at no point in our relationships, both personal and business, will you be asked to give or take a bribe or participate in activities or decisions that will be harmful to our environment or to you as an individual or to the communities which you serve, represent or live within.

Bens Electronics has over the years grown from a small technical services based SME to a medium sized outfit with now about 40 workers on permanent employment.
As our business has grown, we have fully embraced in the fact that our workers are the most important asset for our current and future relevance in the community and organizations that consume and pay for our services.
To this extend, we have put in place policies and practices that ensure that the most basic right of each of our worker is to enjoy working at Bens Electronics regardless of their positions or salary levels. This has been made possible by observing several internationally proclaimed human rights principles in addition to

1. Offering employment opportunities with gender balance as a key consideration
2. Encouraging women to take up technical roles
3. Enabling a friendly working environment for all our workers
4. Creating awareness amongst all our workers and those we come in contact with about the importance of respecting humanity and human rights.
5. Having zero tolerance to child abuse within the communities where we leave or, by extension, amongst our own employees within their families.
6. Giving preferential employment opportunities to our local communities in a bid of widening inclusiveness.
We have also tried to maintain high levels of work place safety by adopting a participatory approach to a comprehensive Occupational Safety and Health policy. This has seen zero occurrence of workplace related accidents or incidents over the past three years.
One area Bens Electronics has not featured positively is in the inclusion of employment opportunities to persons with disabilities due to the nature of our works. However we donated generously to organizations that cater for such members of our society and other less privileged people by participating in CSR activities.
Our organization carries out its business entirely within our borders and hence least exposed to any potential of practicing Human Trafficking. Furthermore it’s our policy to condemn and not to do any business with any known drug or human trafficking individuals or organizations.

While Bens Electronics is not a big organization with huge resources at our disposal, our key to success has been in fostering good relations within our workforce because we know that a happy worker is a loyal worker. Loyalty naturally comes with commitment and high productivity levels.

Some of the active policies we pursue in the achievement of these goals are:

1. Providing basic facilities like clean drinking water, personal protective gear, company paid basic medical services for workers and their dependants
2. Holding regular open meetings to discuss new requirements by the organizations we work for
3. Providing relevant training in new technologies
4. Providing proper tools for particular jobs
5. Running of a reward scheme for best performance
6. Assisting our workers access credit facilities (SACCO) for their financial empowerment
7. Giving workers achievable work targets
8. Upholding the dignity of our workers by not allowing use of derogatory or abusive language at the work place
9. Recruiting with gender balance in mind
10. Recruiting from local communities as a way of giving back and empowerment
11. Encouraging and rewarding loyalty to the company
12. We ensure that salaries are paid on time and allowances paid promptly
13. Not allowing intimidation or use of abusive language at work
14. While we have not found any need for our workers to join a trade union of their choice, any such requests will be granted where justifiable given that we provide essential services in the country.
15. In the past two years all our lowest cadre workers have had salary increments and now earn above the government approved minimum wages by 100% with an additional house allowance.
16. We have signed up and fully comply with our government’s code of conduct in respect to child labour and forced labour. All our workers are above 18 years of age including those who join our organizations on temporary internships.

The Environment is a topic we at Bens Electronics recognize as central to the very existence of the human race as we know it today. Though the nature of our day to day business activities impact minimally on the environment, the long term net effect of other causes of environmental degradation must still concern us all.

In this regard there are a few decisions that have been incorporated in our policies with the intention of contributing to a better environment for us all. These include;

1. Ensuring that all our workers are aware of activities that contribute to global warming and its attendant climate change
2. Participating in carbon footprint reduction activities like adopting proper waste disposal policies
3. Regular Servicing and maintenance of our vehicles in good condition to reduce greenhouse gases emission
4. Encouraging use of renewable energy source like use of solar electricity for lighting and powering office equipment
5. Participating in CSR programmes that impact positively on low income communities and create wider awareness of such bad practices like deforestation that affect negatively our environment.

The last two points are currently receiving quite some good attention as 90% of the energy used at our office in Mombasa for lighting and office equipment operations is Solar based. We are also engaging with local communities in an initiative we have named: “Solar Lighting as a Shared Community Resource Approach”.
The details of what we are doing are founded on installation of Communal Solar Charging Stations and distributing LED lights with capacity to operate for over one week duration without need for a recharge. These lights are handed over to school kids, or hospitals in rural communities who use and come back for a recharge on weekly rotational basis.
This way, a simple 40-points Solar Charging Station can serve about 280 households in a community over one week period. The cost of installing the solar panels and batteries is shared among many people thus reducing the overall individual acquisition burden.
This model is working very well in the few schools and homes and recently, in a hospital in a remote region of Kenya where we are running trials. Our future plans include approaching other likeminded organizations who may be willing to sponsor more schools, hospitals and communities to rely more on solar for their lighting needs as opposed to the kerosene and other hydrocarbon based light sources.
Testimonies from homes where we have installed these simple but very reliable LED lights have been nothing but heart-warming and we see a big contribution of using these heathy sources of energy in low income communities.

In Kenya the risks of corruption while doing business is extremely high and the leadership of Bens Electronics detests and condemns this culture in the strongest terms possible. This position underlies our signing up with the UN GlobalCompact and other initiatives that support the fight against this scourge.
The effects of corruption cause untold suffering among members of the world especially the poor as resources that would have been channelled towards giving better basic services are diverted and denied the very people who NEED it most.

We support all efforts towards Ani-corruption within Kenya and worldwide.

Bens Electronics as a policy of choice does not do business with organizations or individuals who are involved in graft or kickbacks. Within the company, we have put in place measures to encourage ethical behaviour among our employees and in the way we do business or interact with other companies that give us business.

Our major business partner Safaricom Ltd has a comprehensive Code of Ethics that we are signatories to and do all we can to comply by ensuring that our employees are aware and indeed practice its key points.
As a way of reducing the corruption footprint, our employees are encouraged not to even patronize public facilities such hotels that we suspect were build using corruption proceeds.
We are in the process of writing and adopting an HR Policy Manual that addresses many issues touching on ethical behaviour in its widest sense but particularly emphasizing on honesty, integrity, conflict of interest, transparency, accountability S